The Northwest Forest Plan Amendment and Its Impact on Timber Harvesting

The Forest Service is proposing to amend the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP). The NWFP is a forest management plan designed and authorized by the Clinton Administration in 1994 in response to rising anti-forestry activism and controversy around harvesting older and larger trees deemed necessary for the recovery of the northern spotted owl, which was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990.

The NWFP governs nearly 20 million acres of National Forest System lands, amending the land management plans on 17 national forests, and prohibits regularly scheduled timber harvests and restricts active forest management on more than 90% of those forests in Western Washington, Western Oregon, and Northern California.

For the past 30 years, the implementation, or lack thereof, of the NWFP has resulted in federal timber harvest levels plummeting by more than 80%, hundreds of American wood-processing mills that relied on federal timber closing down, and tens of thousands of American workers ultimately losing their jobs, devastating their families and rural communities.

Essential public services that are legally tied to federal timber receipts, like law enforcement, education, and public roads, were drastically cut, hollowing out 150 forested communities throughout the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile, the northern spotted owl has not recovered. This isn’t due to timber harvest, but because of competition with the larger and more robust barred owl and catastrophic wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of owl habitat; a result of a lack of timber harvesting.

The Forest Service is in the midst of amending the NWFP, with the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) released in November 2023. No Draft Decision or Final EIS has yet to be issued. The rescission of the harm definition is timely, and the agency can pivot to the statutory definition of “take” that does not include the previous regulatory definition of harm.

Such a pivot would alter the substance of the consultation documents (i.e., biological opinion) associated with the NWFP amendment such that any concerns about reliance under the previous NWFP is no longer significant. Millions of acres have been placed off limits for timber harvesting due to the definition of harm applied to habitat. This change opens up the opportunity to manage lands for multiple uses including timber harvesting.

The President’s Executive Order on the Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production instructs the agency to identify plan updates (via plan maintenance, plan amendments, or plan revisions) that are necessary to increase timber production based on these new directions. For that reason, the rescission of the harm definition can be incorporated into any amendments to the Resource Management Plan (or revised RMP’s) and into any updated reconsultation documents (i.e., biological opinions). This is a big development to increase management of Pacific Northwest Forests and opportunity for rural towns.

The rescission of the harm definition will narrow the scope of federal forest management projects subject to Endangered Species Act consultation—removing a major roadblock to fuel treatment, habitat restoration, and forest management activities that support rural jobs and renewable wood products.